


Silvertongue

by curuvari



Category: Reckless | Mirrorworld Series - Cornelia Funke, Tintenwelt-Trilogie | Inkheart Trilogy - Cornelia Funke
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25003195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curuvari/pseuds/curuvari
Summary: Mortimer Folchart and his family certainly would have been spared a lot of trouble if only he had kept his hands off a truly peculiar book.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Silvertongue

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Zauberzunge](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/641329) by curuvari. 



_“ Molotov explained how that book, should one be foolish enough to open it, gave the power to read things and creatures out of any book in the world. Jacob had never heard of such magic[.] ”_

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_– Cornelia Funke, “ Reckless III: The Golden Yarn ”_

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~ ❧ ~ ☙ ~

The sun had already set and Mo was about to close his office for the day when the costumer entered. Neither the proud gestures he carried out with his long, thin limbs nor his elegant clothing were the reason why Mo’s heart skipped a beat. No, to blame were only the emerald green eyes with which the stranger examined him. “How can I help you?” Mo finally remembered to ask. The costumer smiled and revealed downright fantastically straight teeth. “Am I right in assuming that I happen to be talking to the famous bookbinder Folchart himself?” His velvet voice left Mo too startled to wonder who graced him with the additament “famous”. Hence, he just nodded his head and took the book which the costumer had produced from his black coat. The pages had begun to come off the spine and the maroon cover was so scratched up as if it had been attacked with a knife. The sight caused Mo’s sensitive, book-loving soul great pain.

“This scripture is rather precious to me,” the costumer declared. “If you could tailor it into new robe, one that is worthy of its contents, I should be happy to reward you adequately.”

“Well, the price for a cover of this size will usually be between twenty-five and forty euros,” Mo explained politely. The costumer’s eyes gleamed in the dim lamp light. “Please, signore! Do not worry about money when you choose the materials! I shall bear all costs!” He emphasised these exclamations with a forceful gesture of his hands, and Mo’s gaze fell onto the silver rings which decorated each of the long, slender, carefully manicured fingers. His thoughts went to the leftover piece of silver leatherette that had been lying inside his desk drawer since that one time when he had rebound a Dutch Liesveldt bible. The costumer gave him a conspirational wink, and Mo was overcome with the odd feeling that he had read off the idea from his face.

“It should be finished by Tuesday,” said Mo.

“Then I shall come and get it on Tuesday,” the costumer beamed.

He bowed his head, turned around and approached the door. Before he exited the bindery, however, he turned back to Mo once more. “Ah! It would probably be in your interest to avoid opening the book.” He did not say anymore. Mo frowned as he watched him leave. Then he examined his patient. He was tempted to open it and have a look at the first page, just to figure out what miracles were to mark this piece of writing as so special. Was it a diary? A family chronicle? A collection of fairytales that had filled the mysterious costumer’s childhood days with thirst for adventure and wanderlust? What kind of damage could one glance cause? But then Mo thought of Resa and Meggie who waited for him to come home, and his curiosity was replaced with a longing for his little family. He cleared his desk, turned off the lights and locked the door. Only when Resa greeted him with a surprised expression did he realise that he was holding the book under his arm.

Some twenty hours later on a rainy Sunday afternoon, Mo sat at the kitchen table and tried to measure the book while heeding his client’s words of warning. His curiosity had returned, but he managed to restrain himself. After all, he had to respect his customers’ privacy. From the other room, he heard Resa reading Meggie a bedtime story – from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, if Mo wasn’t mistaken. “He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody,” Resa’s voice carried over to him. Meggie chuckled, and Mo smiled. Mark Twain’s texts had already captured his heart when he had been a young boy. The work that was now lying on the kitchen table in front of him, however, looked like it had been born in an era when Twain’s great-grandparents could have been trying to weasel their way out of having to go to school. How old was it? Was the date of publication perhaps imprinted on the front page? No, he had to pull himself together!

He flinched when the blinding flash of lightning flickered through the window glass, almost immediately followed by the rumble of thunder. Meggie began to cry. Resa tried to calm her down; meanwhile, Mo stared into the thunderstorm, observed how the sky turned black, how the raindrops pelted the window, how the thunder’s roar grew louder with every rumble. And Mo started to feel sleepy.

When Meggie’s tiny hands pulled at the fabric of his trouser leg, he startled up. She stretched out her arms, and he heaved her onto his lap. “Where is mummy?” he asked. Meggie yawned and made a “hhh-tss-hhh-tss” sound. “Mummy’s asleep,” Mo translated. Meggie nodded. Suddenly, her eyes widened in amazement, and before Mo could stop her, she had gripped the old book’s cover and flicked it open. “Meggie, no!” She ignored him and continued to leaf through the pages. Bewildered, Mo noticed that they were empty. Had the costumer tried to mock him? It hadn’t really seemed that way, but perhaps Mo was just too naïve to identify this type of humour as such. Why, his client would have to pay him either way. Mo considered raising the price. He shook his head and let Meggie carry on flipping through the pages until she eventually grew bored, shut the book and jumped off his lap. “Mummy read,” she babbled. Mo held her back. “Let mummy sleep,” he said. “Mummy was probably very tired.”

“Mummy read,” Meggie repeated and stomped her feet on the ground. “Daddy will read for you,” Mo promised. “But only if you bring me the book _very quietly_ and without waking up mummy. Understood?” Meggie bounced around in excitement and pattered to the bedroom. After a couple of seconds she returned to him, holding “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” in her hands.

“Alright then, Meggie,” Mo began after they had, with a little help of a wool blanket, turned the kitchen table into a cozy cave. “Tell me, do you know what Huckleberry Finn traded away in exchange for his cat?” Meggie nodded. Of course she knew the story; after all, Resa had been reading the book with her for weeks. “Oh well,” sighed Mo, “then you’ll just have to hear the story for the seventy-second time.”

Being the bookbinder and the passionate reader he was, Mo had already consumed hundreds of books and thousands of wonderful sentences and quotes. He still didn’t find the words to describe how he felt when Huckleberry Finn himself suddenly cowered in their kitchen and the sight of his dead cat caused Meggie to break into tears.

Two whole months had passed since the customer had commissioned Mo to rebind his book. How utterly strange, thought Mo, that he hadn’t shown up or tried to get in touch, although the matter had seemed to be of such importance to him. The book had received its new cover on schedule. It was now clad in silver, a colour of a sheen as empty as the blank pages, which gaped in their deceitfully promising dress like abysses made of paper.

The night was clear and filled with stars, and Meggie had already dozed off. Resa and Mo had crawled under the blanket of their bed, and Mo let his eyes wander over the lines which his wife held so dear. Over the course of the sixty-one days that had passed, Mo had conjured objects from “Farmer Giles of Ham”, “Volpone”, “Red Riding Hood” and even an agitated Polonius from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, who, however, had walked out of the door as soon as the opportunity had arisen. Resa, who had learned a little Danish from her aunt, had reassured Mo that it had been for the best to let him go. Now, Mo felt her shiver with tension. Ever since he had gifted her “Inkheart”, she had been obsessed with Fenoglio’s fabulous world, and Mo had no trouble understanding why. The words nestled into his lips like silk; they glid from his tongue and flowed into the room. Soon, very soon, they would be face to face with him, the Fire-Dancer, tamer of flames, or at least with his marten, or perhaps Mo would only get hold of the fire-eater costume: If it wouldn’t work right away, Mo would just keep reading until his and Resa’s dream would come true and Dustfinger, in flesh and blood and bone, would be standing in their bedroom.

The marten was in fact the first one to emerge from the pages. Resa clapped one hand over her mouth and reached out the other one to pet the animal. She laughed when Gwin began to scratch the back of her hand. And Mo read and read and read. Fenoglio’s words danced before his eyes, transformed the closet into a tower and the ceiling into a dense leaf canopy. He savoured every letter, tasted every sweet lateral, every soft M, every cheeky K. The air smelled of smoke and of fire and leaves. Eventually, he found that Resa’s body had stopped warming his. Had she jumped to her feet and run towards the Fire-Dancer? He paused and raised his head. His heart started to race when he caught sight of the scarred face which he had so badly wished for. “You are actually here,” he whispered in disbelief. “Resa, did you see that? It worked! It really worked!” But Resa did not answer. Mo called her name, ran through the entire flat, twice, thrice, five times. She was gone. Only Dustfinger stood there, motionless, speechless, pale. When Mo in his desperation began to shake him, to beg for his help, he gazed at him fixedly. “Where am I?” he asked. Mo didn’t know the fitting answer. He stammered an explanation, a poor explanation, too blunt and tactless. Where had she gone? He looked for her on every page, read the same section ten more times, but instead of his wife, the light of his life, the mother of his little daughter, he summoned two shadows, one more terrible than the other.

The rest of his memories of that horrible night disappeared in the mist of his shock. He made no attempt to stop Capricorn and Basta when they determined to declare this new world their own. He did not intervene when they used their venomous tongues to bring Dustfinger under their control. He let them go, he did not care about them; all that mattered was to find Resa and bring her back. He tried, day after day, week after week, year after year. It was impossible to explain to Meggie that her mother would not return, or that they had to leave their home to flee from a threat he could not make her understand. She cried for a long, long time, but the brains of young children are merciful in their forgetfulness. At some point, she stopped asking for her mother, and the memory faded.

The morning after Resa’s disappearance, Mo searched for the silver book. Perhaps its empty pages knew an answer, or maybe he could worm the solution out of its owner. He could not find it. Just like Teresa Folchart, the book had vanished into thin air. Instead, on Monday morning, Mo found five silver rings lying on his desk. He examined them for engravings, for any hint that would have lead him to the mysterious costumer, but nevermind how long he stared at them or palpated them, there was nothing to be found. Eventually, he hurled the rings out of the window, packed up his and Meggie’s belongings and planned their escape from Capricorn and his followers. Only slowly did Mo recognise the seriousness of the threat which he had unleashed on his world, and how many years, how much home, how much security he and his daugher would have to sacrifice in order to flee from the Inkhearted. The shadows stuck to their heels, regardless of where they went. They consumed Mo. And at night, when Meggie was asleep and Mo left alone with his thoughts, they glared at him, the customer’s emerald eyes. “I did warn you,” they seemed to wink at him in gross amusement.

Five rings. Five silver rings for his family. Mo would have cut out his own tongue if he could have traded it for the opportunity to scratch these emerald eyes out of that cursed customer’s dreadful face.

~ ❧ ~ ☙ ~

_“The light from the hallway fell on her bed, mingling with the darkness of the night that seeped in through the window, and Meggie lay there waiting for the dark to disappear and take her fear of some evil menace away with it. Only later did she understand that the evil had not appeared for the first time that night. It had just slunk back in again.”_

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_– Cornelia Funke, “Inkheart”_

**Author's Note:**

> I promise the German version doesn’t sound quite as bad.


End file.
